The NDP critic for children's services is telling parents of autistic children now is the time to get even louder.
Monique Taylor, along with MPPs Teresa Armstrong and Peggy Sattler, hosted parents devastated by recent provincial changes to autism service at a meeting in London Thursday.
"Families know best that their children will not ever be able to have the opportunity to reach their full potential if they're not given this training that they so desperately need," says Taylor. "We need to continue to fight the battle. We need to convince the premier that this isn't the decision that families were looking for or that they need."
The province recently announced a new Ontario Autism Program with $333-million in funding but the program limits Intensive Behavioural Intervention (IBI) therapy to children aged two to four.
London is the second stop on Taylor's province-wide mission to find out what parents need to help their autistic children. More than 200 families rallied with her at Queen's Park last week, urging the government to reverse its decision.
"We've seen that they (the Liberal government) have recognized the wrong decisions that they have made lately because they are rash decisions. They are 'putting a fire out' decisions," says Taylor. "That's not the way our children's mental health needs to be treated. They have created this list. They have taken names on this list and asked the children to wait patiently because the wait lists were long. Now they need to keep their word and make sure those families that waited get the service."
Christine Julien's 6-year-old son Malik has received IBI therapy for a year and a half. She says his progression has been a dream come true.
"He wasn't talking at all. Now he uses four to five different types of communication, we're talking communication systems like the iPad and verbally," says Julien. "If you've never heard your child speak, you've waited five years for your child to utter a word that's huge."
With Malik about to enter grade two, Julien worries about a school system that is ill equipped to handle an influx of autistic children being transferred off the IBI wait list into schools.
"The schools don't have the resources. It's going to effect my kid, it's going to effect the kids that don't have autism because our kids are going to need extra resources," says Julien.
Taylor ended the meeting with parents by encouraging them to continue the fight by staging rallies and contacting their local MPPs.
"We need to ensure that children at a very young age get the services they need but that can't be done at the expense of the children who are over five," says Taylor.